#joy

Into the Woods: 100 Days (30)

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 30: On Which I Pivot Into the Woods

This year’s fundraising Gala theme for my school is “Into the Woods.” My fearless colleague has worked her magic with a group of students who designed, cut, and laid out a quilt to be auctioned off. This is powerful pedagogy, having students collaborate, learn design techniques, work with fine motor skills, and feel the satisfaction of a job well done.

They’ve begun appliqueing, but the process is taking longer than we expected, so for tonight’s project, I brought the quilt home so I could catch up on some of the needlework. Here are some elements of the quilt—the final reveal will be the night of the Gala.

This too is resistance—to apathy, to indifference, to control—to enable children to create a thing of beauty, something they can take pride in, a way that they can give back to this community that has given them (and us, their teachers) so very much.

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#The100DayProject Day 6

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Day 6:
“The best reason for a knitter to marry is that you can’t teach the cat to be impressed when you finish a lace scarf.” ― Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, At Knit’s End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much

Actually, my biggest knitting fan is my cat, and I think he can’t wait until I am finished with The Alone Together Sweater, so I can wear it and he can sit on me.

Today is another day of Parent Teacher Conferences. I’ve never taught at a school that brings me such joy during PTConferences. We do team meetings, and we sit around and talk about how the student has grown, strategizing ways to make learning easier and more effective. The high schoolers attend their own conferences, and they participate in the strategy sessions. Today at the end of a session a student gave an impromptu speech about how much Janus has supported their personal and academic growth, and their parent had everybody getting teary talking about how proud they are of their student’s persistence and kindness and creativity.

Today I got to the ribbing at the wrist of the sleeve, and made nine little hearts for Pride, holding onto that beautiful and loving energy of my students and their parents and my colleagues. May we all See each other with such gracious eyes.

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#The100DayProject Day 3

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Day 3:

It’s harder to see the progress in only a few rows today, in about 15 minutes of knitting. Long day.

I’ve been wanting to write a little bit about Art as Resistance. My husband and I have both been enjoying creating thoughtful and artful signs for protests, so that’s one kind. Poetry which calls the dictator and his toadies to account is another kind. You see it everywhere sprouting up on the internet: reels of fierce new protest songs, comics and collage and editorial cartoons and posters and t-shirts and buttons. I want to keep pushing out my own art and poetry in active resistance to cruelty and evil.

Also, simply doing art of some kind is, for me, a powerful resistance. Bring me beauty! Bring me joy! Set my feet to dancing! We’re in this thing for the long haul, and we need all the art, all the music, all the poetry and dancing.

Recently, knitting and crocheting have been extremely regulating for me. The Files and the evil they uncover have me quivering daily in fury that dysregulates my nervous system. I feel like I am dissolving into a red haze. And so I take up the yarn, repeating the same stitches over and over again, watching the stripes of color appear, feeling the softness of yarn sliding over my fingers, listening to the swish and click of yarn and needles. I am going to need to stay grounded and regulated if I am going to stay in the fight. Making art is part of that necessary medicine.

#The100DayProject

@dothe100dayproject